"Gnome 3 has received a lot of disapproval of late, from the Gnome foundation being charged with not taking care of its users, or losing mindshare, to Gnome 3 itself being an unusable mess. I've been using Gnome 3 myself for a few months to sort the truth from the fiction, and to try and understand just how the Gnome foundation expects their newest shell to be used. I will end with some thoughts on how Gnome 3 can be improved. The review will require a fairly lengthy preface, however."

This feature which has been described as incomplete, but with the potential to become a killer has been in KDE4 for a couple of years now.

Activities allow one to group apps and documents, save and pause the activities, stop the activity and relaunch it later, etc...

I'm unsure if GNOME knew about this very prominent KDE feature, but it seems as though they are not developing a feature which will differentiate them and allow them to be seen as unique and excellent for having it, but rather making the feature common amongst the two largest desktops, making anything without it seem lacking.

KDE also has the history by default through krunner and nepomuk/strigi, as well as having more advanced monitor and window management.
It seems as though, everything they are moving towards is already possible with KDE, and KDE have done it without removing features, but rather by adding them.

That sounds pretty neat. Before I wrote this review I was actually in the process of moving to KDE from Unity. Then I thought I should use Gnome 3 in earnest to try and explain to myself exactly why I didn't like it.

KDE's always sounded better technically, but it always felt like a steep learning curve. Coupled with the fact that their desktop themes always look only just slightly askew, I never really took the plunge (except for the really early days on a slackware distro). Kubuntu has also been a bit of a bastard child of Ubuntu, not receiving enough love. I might want to try using KDE for a few months and see how it is.